


the lord who receives many guests

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Original Work
Genre: F/M, Forced Marriage, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mythology - Freeform, Paganism, Period-Typical Sexism, not as depressing as these tags make it sound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 14:26:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15145106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: They say that Hades kidnapped me, but they speak in euphemism and polite fiction. They speak to avoid enraging my mother Demeter or embarrassing my father Zeus. They divert to the splendor of the flowers that day, my picking of the narcissus, the might of Hades' chariot, anything that will draw attention from the truth, which is that Hades was only doing his duty.The truth is that I died.





	the lord who receives many guests

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



> I hope my recipient enjoys the fic!
> 
> The title is from a description of Hades in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, linked in the end notes.

They say that Hades kidnapped me, but they speak in euphemism and polite fiction. They speak to avoid enraging my mother Demeter or embarrassing my father Zeus. They divert to the splendor of the flowers that day, my picking of the narcissus, the might of Hades' chariot, anything that will draw attention from the truth, which is that Hades was only doing his duty.

The truth is that I died.

Narcissus is a narcotic, among other things, and it was long used by the human women and us immortals for trances, for rites. I suppose men may use it as well, but I wouldn't know. I had access to it, for it grew all around the realm of the immortals, and no one would question my need for it, my preparation of it. It is true that the day I was taken to Hades' realm, I went out to pick narcissus with my friends, but my exit from my father's realm happened some time later, in the evening.

They say that my father gave me to Hades, and in a sense that is true. I was young, but not so young, and getting older every day. My father - who has always thought of women as having perhaps two or three uses, those not terribly distinct from each other - thought it was a good time for me to marry, and thereby enable him to settle some political conflict.

He would not have chosen Hades. My husband has little use for politics, whether immortal or human. All humans come to him in time and in the usual course of things no immortals do, so there is no reason for him to care much for either group's competitions. There was no cause for Zeus to seek closer ties to him - and indeed, like most, my father would probably have rather kept my husband further away. He has not been pleased, these years since, to have such intimate bonds of obligation to Hades.

I knew about the plans for my marriage. I could not bear to be parted from my mother, from my girlhood, but Zeus made plain he would hear no dissent. Still he did not reveal the intended groom.

I spent more time outside, wandering as I would not be permitted to as a respectably married woman. Away from people, I wouldn't have to hear rumors of who would be honored with me. I spent more time involved in certain rites I was taught by my mother and by others knowledgeable in the subject, rites which distracted me, took my mind from the world where I had to remember the future and into a timeless place.

A certain dosage of narcissus will be fatal to a human. I am not human, was not human - but children of the immortals, like human children, are more fragile than our parents. I was old enough to be desirable in the eyes of my father, but I was still a child with a child's vulnerability. Particularly in the context of such magic, there are ways, there are paths to death.

I had prepared narcissus and other substances many times before. I knew the safe dosages and the unsafe ones. Perhaps I was crying when I came home from what might be my last trip out with my friends, and tears blurred my eyes and mind. Perhaps I was distracted by my pain. Perhaps I was deliberate.

I will not tell you that one thing. It would serve no purpose to confirm or deny it, when either answer would pain some part of my family. Suffice it to say that I took narcissus and I died.

My mother wept, my friends lamented. They washed my body and brought it to my tomb. They put a coin on my mouth to pay Charon and on my chest a tablet to show I was an initiate of the mysteries. My mother poured out perfumes, she poured out oils. My mother poured out wine and milk and honey. They closed my tomb, they went home, they washed Demeter's house in seawater and they washed themselves, and that should have been the end of it.

That might well have been the end of it, but you and I know it was not.

I was told later that my mother left the realm of the immortals and paced throughout the lands. She had prepared to lose me to marriage, had raged when Zeus refused and sent famine throughout human lands, but marriage has its consolations. It would at least have allowed for visits and feast days and grandchildren.

To lose me to death - she had never expected it, should never have had to endure it, and she did not know how. She was not a human woman with many more children to distract her, friends who knew her pain and would comfort her and urge her to move on. Her friends were also strangers to grief for children. They drew away from her, frightened by the idea that death might touch them too.

She apparently tried to replace me, not with a child of her own who might bring her this pain again, but with the nursing of human children, temporary fancies. They were something to give her the weight of a warm body in her lap, eyes gazing up at her that reminded her of mine. She went where no one knew her, and no one whispered about her grief. She went about in this way for three or four years, and all this time I was among the shades in Hades.

They don't often speak of this time when they tell my story. There is a curious gap in the mouths of poets. It occasionally has been filled with speculation - of my husband's torments or kindness, of whether we conspired over my running away and lay together in abandon now or whether I hid from him and sobbed over my mother's absence.

The truth is that I did very little. Shades are not the living; their time is past. There was no great pleasure for me after death but there was no great torment, either. I slept or drifted among the human shades, and knew myself to be in like company, among many others. This comforted me when I roused enough to understand I was away from my home. Mostly, shades don't care for much, don't think much, have nothing to remember. I am not entirely certain I knew I was dead.

Some of this has changed since I became Queen of Hades, for it was not necessary but only the easiest way. Some of it is the nature of things and unavoidable. But for now I am describing the realm of the dead when I was among them, in those years when my mother wandered the realm of mortals and I was no longer a girl, but not a married woman either, yet.

My mother's search for solace ended, but her grief had not waned and her anger had built. It had become a merciless, hungry thing. She was furious with my father for insisting on my marriage and creating the situation that led to my death. She was furious with my husband, for in her time alone she had forgotten the natural way of life and decided that he was hiding me from her maliciously. She was furious with humans for their ability to move on past grief, for what she saw as apathy to a horror in their midst.

She had never had the power to defy my father directly, and my husband was out of reach. But humans? She was a goddess, and she had the power of life and death over them in the power of the harvest. Better still, this gave her a way of striking out against my father: for my father liked to receive their prayers and sacrifices and rites, he had come to depend on their praise and sendings. He would be unhappy to lose these things, to see them dead.

And they did die. My mother stopped the harvest for an entire year. The wealthy in famines often buy food from places it is growing, and the poor, when they can, will up and leave for work elsewhere -- but there was no elsewhere this time. All the world was in famine at once. People ate their stores, and they ate straw and boiled leather, and finally they ate their dead. Many shades joined us this year, and they cried out still in the sleep of death, for they knew they had left their families still starving. Those of us already in the caverns of Hades felt their unease, and we cried out with them, our dreams turning to nightmares. We thrashed and wailed.

I am not sure - my husband will not tell me - whether it was Zeus who sent Hermes for him, or Hades who rose up to find out the cause of the famine, first. I have my suspicions, made stronger by my husband's silence, for he would not wish me to see myself valueless in my father's eyes. My father is arrogant and easily distracted and he may well have thought it better to let Demeter ease her wrath on humans, let her rage burn itself out, and wait patiently for humans to resume the rites. He may have been embarrassed to make what would seem a major concession, to a mere woman not even his wife. Besides which, many of them were burning what little they had left to try to appease him, thinking he was responsible. His offerings had not yet ceased.

My husband is a kind man, for all his only responsibility is the care taking of the dead. He cares little for politics, but he was disturbed to see so many enter the caverns, to hear us crying out together at their pain.

Hades rose from his realm, or Hermes came down to him. Zeus asked him to retrieve me, to appease my mother and cause her to relent and draw forth a new harvest; or Hades, shocked to find the state of the world, inquired and discovered the cause of Demeter's anguish. I don't know; if you wish to find out, my husband may answer the question from one who is not me.

Either way, Hades had not thought of me in years, since my death; and then only briefly, for long enough to retrieve me. Perhaps he had even been surprised to receive me when all immortals had awaited my marriage; but it was a brief affair.

But now he had to think of me. Hades came into the caverns and searched for my shade.

I should not neglect how difficult and awkward a task this was. The dead do not remember much or think much. They become very like each other with time, absorbing the memories of each new arrival into mass, swirling dreams. They are like young things, children or puppies curled together, uncertain where one begins and one ends.

Hades was not even sure the task was possible. I had been dead only about four years, and that made it easier, but some shades forget who they are, lose their individuality, faster than others. He might not be able to identify Persephone daughter of Demeter at all. He might find me unrecoverable, able to speak only a few sentences, totally unsuited to appeasing Demeter.

But he did find me.

I have said that I remember little, but I did have some thought, and I know what I was doing when Hades came for me. I told my mother I spent the years wailing for her, dreaming of our separation, and I told Hades I remembered little but peace; but neither is true.

I was dreaming, when Hades came for me, of butterflies. There was a crowd of them, jeweled, many colored, on the ground. I leaned forward and parted them in a great swirl of rising wings, and found they had alighted on a corpse.

I drew back in disgust or horror. When one of the butterflies alighted on my hand, I saw that the pattern on its wings was in fact the face of a coin, glimmering yellow in the light of the sun.

I have remembered this dream all my life since, although I don't know what it means. Most likely it means nothing: the minds of the dead, unconstrained by time or body, wander far.

Hades touched my hand and I woke, startled.

I had never been touched by a man before. The last thing I remembered clearly was picking flowers, my friends lamenting my marriage, and so I said, "Have you come to marry me?"

The dead often babble. Hades paid it little mind, except as a way to get me to cooperate with being drawn out of the comforting mass of the dead. "If you like," he said. "Please come with me."

The horror of marriage, of separation from Demeter and seclusion as a married woman, had faded in death. I felt little, feared little; I remembered dreaming of the butterflies and the corpse and didn't want to go back there. I said, "Alright," and I followed him out, to the light, and upwards.

Hades saw quickly two things. The first, a good one, was that I probably still knew who I was. My hair still shone bronze, my face was distinct, and I wore the clothing I had been sent to the tomb in: the cloth my own good weaving, my own embroidery lining my tunic and cloak, my own jewelry adorning me, the details of it all recalled firmly.

The second, however, was that I had very little sense left. I followed him docilely enough, but with no clear idea of why, or where we were going. As we exited the shadowy caverns of shades, I stared around at ordinary objects, startled by them. After so long in the dark, I was no longer sure of what I saw. I tried to put my hand into a lamp - I cringe recalling this - because I was attracted by the glow, and he had to knock my hand aside quickly to stop me from burning myself.

I jerked back, startled and afraid when before it had not occurred to me that danger might exist; afraid of him.

"I'm sorry," Hades said when he saw my reaction. "It's hot, and touching it might hurt you." And probably wanting to think about his problems in relative peace, "Would you like to go back to sleep?"

"No," I said, feeling insulted and not sure enough of myself to know why. "I've slept enough." But I didn't want him to hit me again, even if some dim memory was rising to tell me I wouldn't have been happier if he had let me put my hand into an oil lamp.

"I'll go sit over there," I said, pointing at a lounging area done in cushions of a lush blue. I was realizing that the colors in my dreams had been washed out and faded, in the years I'd seen only shadow. I wanted to look at the embroidery, think about what had been used to dye the fabric. I was sure I'd remember if I had some time.

"Go ahead," Hades said, and put his face in his hands.

I sat on the cushions, not yet fully myself, not yet able to feel much interest in him or the situation. Instead, I studied the fabric. I thought about the process of dyeing: gathering flowers, pulling up roots, gathering beetles or shell fish. Drying, preparing, grinding. I thought about the smell of kettles cooking dye, I thought about thread dipped into them. The memories drew me back to life, one step at a time; they were simple, repetitive enough for me to grasp, but they had been the rhythm my life was set to.

I phrase these things quickly, in words, the way that I did in life: but half dead still, the memories came slowly and all of a piece. I closed my eyes and saw, one at a time, each moment of the day I'd last helped my mother gather blue dye, the last time I'd ground pigment, the day we had dyed thread for the tunic and cloak I wore now - clothes that had been intended for my wedding and instead become my funeral costume.

I still felt little at these memories, had little capacity in me to feel at all. If there was anything, there was curiosity, and a sort of delicate appreciation like one listening to strange music, eating a new food. I took in details, starved for them, and with them for life, for meaning; half my mind had gone to shadow.

"Persephone," Hades said, from very close by, and when I opened my eyes to find him in front of me I screamed.

He sighed.

I was myself enough now to feel my cheeks redden. "If you had called out when you approached, you would not have surprised me," I said, indignant. I drew my cloak closer around me. I had often been around, even alone with, strange men as a young girl, but I was a girl no longer. The situation was not as shocking as it might be, for one like me, the daughter of my father's mistress: but my father considered me legitimate and that mattered a great deal insofar as what was appropriate behavior on my part.

"My apologies," Hades said, and inclined his head, which mollified me. "Tell me your name, if you would?"

"You just said it," I said, but, "I am Persephone, daughter of Demeter." I would not claim my father - and some indignation, some remembered sorrow or anger, rose in my breast.

Hades saw at once that I was lifelike now, I think. "You recall what became of you."

"I drank a preparation of narcissus and I died," I said. Surely the news of my impending marriage had reached Hades; if not, I would not tell him and humiliate myself further by implying I had had motive to kill myself.

"Your mother grieves you well past the appropriate time period," Hades said. "It has been four years since your death. She has stopped the harvests and famine wreaks havoc on Earth."

"For four years!" I had helped my mother with her duties, had a little idea of what famine wrought. "Is there any mortal left alive?"

"Then you understand the problem." Hades' eyes were grave. "She has stopped it for only one year so far: there are yet stores enough in some places to last them a while. But a short one."

I had remembered my life's work, cloth and thread and dye; I had recalled anger, recovered sorrow, reclaimed embarrassment. But so newly drawn from shadow, my mind balked at such a catastrophe, at the depth of emotion it called for. I rebelled, scrambled for logic to save me. "Why stop the harvests? Does she want to send the whole world to Hades with me?"

"She wishes to force your father to produce you," Hades told me. "She sees that you died because of his plans for you to marry; and she has decided that it was a conspiracy between the two of us, to deliver you from her and to me instead. Dead humans do not conduct rites or burn sacrifices."

I swallowed. I had never imagined my mother capable of such cruelty – or such desperation. "Why have you taken me here? I'm dead, immortal or no. I can't intercede with her."

"There are ways," Hades said, slowly, thoughtfully. "They depend on a number of things - the recentness of the death, the resilience of the dead. But you know me and yourself; you remember the events before your death and you understand what I am telling you now. I think it will be very possible to return you."

The word return, however, struck a chord in me. "Return me to my father."

"And your mother," Hades said, not following. I think he had assumed Demeter only possessive of me, resistant to the naturalness of marriage as she had been to death and now was to life, in the form of the harvest. He had never met me, had little cause to think about me or my marriage, and was familiar with many true accidents involving those who risked drinking narcotic herbs.

I should have gone to any fate for the sake of those my mother struck at, but my mind was still half-buried in death. I had trouble conceiving of _their_ pain, except in the distant echoes of our dreams together. I knew my own all too well.

"No," I said.

Hades' eyebrows arched. "No?" he repeated.

"No." I pulled my cloak over half my face, shielding myself from the disapproval I anticipated. "My mother will calm in time. Some other god may intervene. I won't go back to them."

I thought Hades would shout and storm as men - particularly my father - did in my experience when defied. I thought he might hit me, throw me to the ground and beat me, threaten me, any number of things.

Instead, he sat in silence for a moment and then said only, "Why not?"

"My father doesn't want me back for my sake, if he wants me at all. He will only marry me off as he intended. He wouldn't tell me or my mother before _who_ his intended was, and that - I fear why he would not reassure us. I fear marriage. I know death now and do not fear it; you have nothing to compel me with. I will not go."

Even then I knew well he must have other tools to manage the dead with. Still, they were brave words, and I meant them.

"The original plans may well have fallen through," Hades said. "You realize it has been four years."

"Then he will find another groom, one equally hard to please if he must resort to giving me away to end a conflict. I will not go."

Hades studied me. "It is the marriage you object to, not life itself."

"Yes."

"If I find a way for you to return without risking marriage, you will go?"

"I don't _want_ to be dead," I said. "I didn't before and I want it less now. I miss dancing with my friends in my mother's fields. I miss the feel of her hair's weight across my hands, her fingers guiding my embroidery. I miss food, drink - wine, pomegranates, honey. But I can't say that I believe any such way exists. My father is king of the gods, and maybe worse, he is my father, with the right of law over me. I will go if I can escape him, but not otherwise. If you find one, I must believe that your way is good before I will go."

"That is very fair," Hades said, to my surprise, and he got up. "I must think. You remember what fire is now?"

"Yes." I pulled my cloak the rest of the way across my face so I didn't have to look at him.

"Then I will leave you and bring refreshments when I return," he said, and exited.

He may have been gone for only a few moments; it might have been days. I missed food, but didn't truly crave it. I didn't breathe except for speech, my joints did not stiffen and my muscles did not go sore from holding one position. And my mind was still very much scattered.

When Hades did return, he brought with him wine and a pomegranate, which I thought made an amusing meal. He smiled thinly when I laughed and offered me a glass, which I drank, and a few seeds, which I ate; then he stopped me.

I was frustrated, but I had recovered more of my fear, my learned modesty, and I didn't argue.

"I have a possible solution," he said, "Though I don't know if it will please you or not. There is an old law - ancient now - which entitles me to the souls of those who are lured to eat the food of the Underworld."

I froze. I had been licking the juice from my lips but I stopped now, as though this would dissolve the seeds from my belly.

He smiled. "It is mostly meant for the living, those who find the realm by its other entrances; I have used it before to keep mortals pursued by gods from them. _You_ , Persephone, are already dead and mine by right anyway. But I suspect that will be rapidly forgotten when you return.

"So here is my offer: go to your mother, be reunited with her and assuage her anger. Tell her, then, that I tricked you - that I by force or guile compelled you to eat three seeds of a pomegranate. Tell her I have claimed three months of your year accordingly, and that you must return to Hades for those months - if that is agreeable to you?"

I had not seen much of Hades apart from the caverns, but they were not a place of terror; I had just been arguing to stay forever. "It is. But how will this stop my father from marrying me off the remaining nine months?" I asked - and then I saw it.

It was the time period that reminded me; nine months, the length of pregnancy, the consequence of sex.

"You plan to say that you abducted me," I said; I couldn't stand to say the word rape.

Hades confirmed it. "I don't know if you will find me any better a husband than whatever one Zeus plans," he said, smiling thinly. "I am not fond of music or parties, and little grows here in the Underworld. My rooms are sparse and plain, and the views are not beautiful.

"But I care little for reputation and propriety has no power over me. You can have your mother's fields for three quarters of the year, and you may have half my house and decorate it as you like for your quarters; and you can behave as you like, starting now. You will have your own choice of what to say. I wanted to make sure you ate before you knew, so you could honestly say you were tricked: but I swear I will exert no claim without your permission."

I closed my eyes. Again, the thought of it was too enormous to bear. I had dreaded marriage, and I had resigned myself to marriage. To _choose_ marriage, or to reject it, was a new thing and a hard one.

"You understand my mother will despise you," I said. I would try to tell her it had been a trick, but I doubted she would believe it.

"Most already do," Hades said. "I have few guests and few friends, and many will believe the worst they can think of about me; so I don't think it will be a hard story for you to tell. They will want it to be true."

I knew this was the case. I had heard many stories about him, all clearly false once I had any experience at all of his realm, but all at least half-believed by the teller and the audience both.

"What kind of husband will you be?" I asked.

"I have told you--"

"Not that," I said. "I have seen at least a little of the house, and truthfully it matters little. Will you be kind or harsh? Will you beat me, shout at me? Will you short me on food and clothing during my time here, so I have to hoard grain and dried fruits for those three months a year?" I swallowed and made myself say it: "Will you really force me?"

I had no way of compelling him to tell me the truth. We were already defying my father's will; Zeus's wrath would not protect me, if he would have bothered to try in the first place. But I asked nevertheless.

When Hades looked into my eyes I saw only exhaustion and sincerity, and he said, "I swear to you that I will not, Persephone. I will give you my rooms and half my kingdom and I will leave you in peace unless you seek me. I have never raised a hand in anger and I do not plan to start it now."

I believed him, and I was right to. Since I have come up from the caverns of the dead, in both the confrontation with my father and in my marriage after, everything has been as my husband said, but for one thing.

He told me he would treat me kindly and share what he had. He did not know then that we would come to love each other. Few are so honored in life as to join eros with matrimony, but I have known them both together.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written with heavy reference, but not strict adherence, to [this translation](http://www.uh.edu/~cldue/texts/demeter.html) of the earliest known version of the myth of Persephone, the Hymn to Demeter.
> 
> I can't exhaustively list my sources here, but I found _Women's life in Greece and Rome: a sourcebook in translation 3rd edition_ , compiled by Mary Lefkowitz and Maureen Fant, particularly helpful. Please note that gender and social life was extremely variable across the Greek world and across time periods.


End file.
